Team Astana’s Continental Team (lower division cycling team) has been suspended by Alexander Vinokourov after another Astana rider was found guilty of doping. UCI confirmed on the 26th of November, 2014 that Artur Fedosseyev is guilty of utilizing banned steroids.

Previously, four other Astana riders have been tested for doping and all of those test results have been positive. Two of those riders namely Victor Okishev and Ilya Davidenok are a part of Astana Continental Team along with Artur Fedosseyev. On the other hand, the other two riders- Valentin and Maxim Iglinskiy are the ones associated with the Astana WorldTour Team.

According to Gazzetta dello Sport (An Italian newspaper), Alexander Vinokourov is certainly not Astana Continental Team’s manager but he has utilized his power to provisionally suspend the team. Kazakh Cycling Federating actively supported Vinokourov and officially suspended all the activities of the team. (more…)

Sir Bradley Wiggins won his first road world title in time trial category on 24th September 2014. Winning the world time trial is something Sir Bradley Wiggins was aiming at for a long time, even before he thought about winning the Tour de France and get knighted. Winning was not entirely easy for him but in the last part of the race he managed to secure his victory by beating Tony Martin of Germany, the defending Champion by a margin of 26.23 seconds on a hilly course spanning 47.1 Kilometers in Ponferrada, Spain.

Both in 2011 and in 2013, Wiggins finished after Tony Martin. But this year he was confident about winning. He said later on that he knew if he could ever beat Tony Martin, it would be on a course similar to this. Wiggins said that it was his last road championship, and surely there couldn’t have been a better conclusion.

Among the many goals set by Bradley Wiggins, this was perhaps the only one left for him to achieve. Bradley Wiggins has won one Olympic gold medal in time trial, six world track titles, three Olympic gold medals in track cycling and the Tour de France. He won the rainbow jersey twenty years after Chris Boardman did for the first time as a British. Questions have been raised regarding Sir Dave Brailsford’s decision of not letting him participate in this year’s Tour de France. But according to Sir Wiggins not playing in the Tour de France actually helped him win the title.

Wiggins said that it was known to him that the final loops of the course will determine who will win the race. He said that it became very difficult when he was nearing the end of the race. According to him his pacing was perfect. He said that before the climb he was already ten seconds ahead of Tony, but he was reluctant about taking any chances and therefore kept driving with whatever energy he had left because he didn’t want to take any risk on the descent and finally he became victorious.